


Tad

by viastor14



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Backstory, Because there aren't any open contradictions with the current mythos, Canon Compliant, F/M, Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, Or at least I'm pretty sure this counts as canon compliant, This is new to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 00:32:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19240222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viastor14/pseuds/viastor14
Summary: After (five?) multiple books where Patricia Briggs alludes to the mysterious backstory/circumstances that caused Tad to 'lose his cheer', I went ahead and wrote my own explanation and then gave him his cheer back, because I'm impatient and I like him and Zee too much. Takes place shortly after Storm Cursed.





	Tad

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written fan fiction before, only things of my own, but this series is one of my cherished favorites and playing in the sandbox with the characters was way too much fun. I don't really know how this process works, and I would LOVE feedback- I'm in the middle of publishing submissions for other stuff and I could really use beta readers and, if I deserve it, faint praise :)

Tad woke in the middle of the night like he’d been doused in cold water, sitting bolt upright in bed and sucking in a breath. For a moment, before reality set in, he thought someone might actually have dumped a bucket of water over him. As he looked around the empty room, the nonsensical logic of dreams slipping away, he realized it was just sweat soaked through his shirt. Glancing down at himself, he grimaced. The sheets were damp as well and tangled in knots. He kicked his blanket off and stood, knowing with certainty he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep.

It had been months since the last nightmare. Months, and he’d almost been lulled into thinking they would go away altogether, but as he padded downstairs he had the sinking suspicion that they weren’t done with him yet. The witches set him off again, he suspected. As cathartic as it was to help his father and Mercy dispatch the entire black affair, encountering witches was enough to spur the return of his awful dreams. Filling a glass of water at the kitchen sink, he stared up at the clock and sighed. Three am, the witching hour, and like clockwork the only hour he woke up in nameless dread. It didn’t help his state of mind that he would be working with no sleep and a bad mood in the morning.

He stripped off his soaked shirt and threw it over one of the kitchen chairs before he left for the living room, the glass of water dangling half forgotten from his hand. Dropping onto the faded couch, he turned on the television and stared at it blankly, looking through the infomercial without seeing it. One year after he’d left all of it behind, dumping school, the degree, everything else without a second thought just to run far enough and fast enough that the nightmares might not follow him. They did, with no regard for the two thousand plus miles he put between himself and every single cursed witch in New York, the ones that survived him and the ones that didn’t alike. He still wasn’t positive which part of the worst spring of his life was the source of the nightmares. It could have been the witches still living, the handful that could and probably would regroup. It could be the witches he’d killed- they hadn’t died easily, and as much as they deserved it, he didn’t like revisiting the memories. 

Unfortunately, he suspected most of the dreams were a parting gift from Lia. He shoved her out of his head and flopped back on the couch, setting down the water so he could cross his arms over his head and cover his eyes. Thinking her name was bad enough, like the very thought opened doors he wanted to keep locked in his head. Watching her read with her brow furrowed, she always mouthed the words silently and he never stopped making fun of her for doing it- he slammed that thought back in the box, grimacing. It was followed by worse. Her fingers with nails bitten to the quick, lithe as she worked through a knotted tangle of electrical wires- and the moment he shoved that image away, he got the visceral memory of her mutilated hands, three of those fingers cut down to the knuckle, the joints of two on her other hand gone, all of her empty nail beds bleeding and in the background he could hear the near silent noises she was making as she tried to stay silent, silent so they wouldn’t hear her, so they-

He took a measured breath, then another, opening his eyes and dropping his arms so he could stare at the ceiling. One year, and he hadn’t heard a word from her. She was alive, he was fairly sure. Or at least, the nurses at the hospital said she would live, after the one god awful night he spent sitting on the floor outside of her room. He knew the witches were out of the picture, so when she disappeared and the hospital discharge papers he’d stolen said she was taken by her father, he assumed she was recovering and left to try and put his brain back in his skull as best he could. 

And then, nothing. Not so much as a text message, not even an email, nothing. Her apartment was empty when he went to try and find her two days into her silence. The university refused to give him any information, though stealing that was almost as easy as the hospital records, what with his glamour. The records from the school had been about as useless as the ones from the hospital, only showing that she’d withdrawn from all of her classes with no date of return and no contact information listed. 

The more time he spent trying to find her, the more he realized how little he knew about her to begin with. It seemed improbable at first, that the girl he’d been friends with for three years, the person he studied with, drank with, spent every spare hour he had with, was just… gone, and he had no way of finding her. He knew the name she’d given him, but he couldn’t find record of a Lia, or Lea, Leah, or Leigh Ardlaw anywhere in New York- and she was from the city, she’d mentioned it plenty of times when she was dragging him around their freshman year, before he knew the subways and boroughs. 

By the time he was giving up, both on finding her and on school in general, too disquieted and sleep deprived from the nightmares, there was a new horror back home and he took the excuse to leave with more relief than he wanted to admit. The year that followed would have ranked as bad to begin with, but with the added spice of constant nightmares of dying witches and bloodshed, it was nearly intolerable. His dreams had only started to ease up after his dad busted them out of fairyland and he was home for the second time in a year. And now, he thought wearily, they were back along with a new scourge of witches. At least this time he was better at killing them quickly.

He fell asleep between one thought and the next, blinking awake to sunlight after what felt like a split second closing his eyes. It was such a surprise that he had managed sleeping at all that it took him a minute to realize his dad was standing over him. With one of his greying eyebrows lifting slightly, the fae held out a cup of coffee. “You were not down here last night.”

“I woke up in the middle of the night,” Tad replied without explaining, sitting up and taking the coffee from Zee. His father would never push him to talk if he didn’t want to, but he would comment on Tad’s irregular behavior as it happened, gently prodding him to speak. Tad had no intention of talking about Lia or his dreams or the witches, though. Half of it hurt too much and the other half was too disturbing for him to want to give it voice. 

After a moment spent studying Tad, Zee shrugged and walked away, calling back, “I am heading to the garage- are you coming now or shall I tell Mercy you’ll be late?”

“I’ll call her,” Tad said as he stood. He waited until he heard the door slam after his dad to head upstairs, unwilling to draw any more of Zee’s attention. Occasionally, he considered letting it all out, inundating Zee with everything that happened in an attempt to exorcise it from his brain; he knew his dad would listen and help if he could. Only the knowledge that it wouldn’t help stopped him. Nothing would help. The dreams weren’t going to stop and Lia wasn’t going to turn up, and his father couldn’t do anything about either. 

He showered off the remnants of sweat quickly and dressed before he called Mercy. She sounded about as moody as he felt when she answered, though that was nothing unusual these days. Given the general state of her life, he was surprised she managed any semblance of sanity at all. 

“Tell me this isn’t an emergency,” Mercy’s sardonic voice came over the line, exhaustion making it thin.

“You’re the one with all the emergencies,” he retorted. “I’m just late for work.”

She sighed. “You aren’t the only one. Aiden set his bed on fire this morning, the alarm went off at the garage twenty minutes ago and your dad sounded suspiciously unconcerned about it, and SOMEone-”

The last part was pointed, as if she was talking directly to someone that wasn’t him. “-ate all of my bacon and most of the eggs between midnight and seven am.”

“I can get breakfast on the way in,” Tad said, snorting at her ire. “And that’s what you get for living in a house full of werewolves and adopting a preteen firestarter. What did Dad say about the alarm?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘Not to worry,  _ liebling _ , I’ve taken care of it’,” Mercy said in exasperation. “That could mean anything from ‘I put the code in and turned the alarm off’ to ‘I’ve massacred fifteen witches in the parking lot and I’m burning their bodies as we speak’.”

“I feel like he might have mentioned that.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Zee seems to think he needs to spare me from weird things this week,” Mercy sighed. “I don’t know why he’s doing it, but I can just tell- he’s not telling me something, and I think it’s because he doesn’t want me to worry.”

“Could be he thinks you spend enough time worrying about everything under the sun already,” Tad replied as he shoved his feet in his boots and bent to lace them, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder. “Or you’re just worried about him keeping things from you because you don’t have any volcano gods or zombie goats or neolithic monsters to focus on this week.”

“Are you trying to be reassuring? Because you aren’t,” Mercy said. “Don’t go listing things and dare the universe to do worse.”

“Why would I? That’s your job,” he replied as he grabbed a trucker hat and his keys, trotting down the stairs to leave. 

She sighed deeply, putting more force in the sound than strictly necessary, and he grinned as he got in his truck. In a forlorn voice, she said, “If you get breakfast, I’ll get lunch. If you can keep the comments from the peanut gallery to a minimum today, I’ll get dinner, too.”

“Already got dinner, thanks, the peanut gallery is on shift whether you like it or not,” he replied. “I’ll see you in a minute. Tell Aiden I’m getting him an asbestos sleeping bag if he keeps this up.”

“He says you can go dunk your head in a lake,” Mercy said.

Tad’s hearing was nearly as good as his dad’s and he snickered. “That’s not what he said, and the same to him if he wants to be nasty.”

Before Aiden had a chance to say something even more crude in the background, Tad hung up and started his car. The garage was only a few minutes from his dad’s house by car, but he took the roundabout way through the little old neighborhood so he could hit the bakery a few streets over. By the time he got to the garage he was fully armed for the day, a white bakery bag on the seat next to him and half of a croissant stuffed in his mouth. Mercy pulled in right behind him, still stubbornly driving the broken down wreck of a van she was pretending she could restore. He thought she was crazy and so did his dad, but nothing would stop her from a project if she was determined. 

He tossed her the bag as they got out of their cars, swallowing before he said, “Don’t eat all the muffins, I haven’t gotten to them yet.”

“As if I could,” she grumbled. “You eat like a horse, Tad, I bet you bought half the bakery.”

“A third,” he replied as he fell into step with her. They got a few feet closer to the garage before they both slowed, Tad’s grin fading at the same time Mercy’s dark eyes narrowed. Though it looked normal enough, the bay door open and the sign in the office flipped to proclaim that it was open as well, there was an acrid scent in the air that couldn’t mean anything good. 

“You recognize it?” she asked him in a low voice. “The scent.”

He shook his head, slowing down further as he approached the garage cautiously. When they were about ten feet away, Zee wandered out, wiping his hands down with a rag. He didn’t look concerned, his craggy face arranged in an almost pleasant expression. Under her breath, Mercy voiced exactly what Tad was thinking. “That can’t be good.”

Zee was notoriously grouchy, even at the best of times. He was given to gruffness, his expressions of fondness for both Tad and Mercy unconventional, to say the least; he rarely smiled, even when he was enjoying being around them. The few times Tad had seen him moved to actually smile, there was death and dismemberment involved. He raised a hand in a wave as they walked up to join him, a very unpleasant smile curving his lips. “Don’t worry,  _ meine kinder _ , just an old ‘friend’ come to say hello.”

Tad could practically hear the quotations around his father’s use of the word friend. Glancing at Zee’s hands, he took note of the fact that the stains Zee was wiping away were blood rather than grease or oil. He gave his father an even look. “You should have called, I could have been here sooner.”

“Bah,” Zee grunted, waving him away. “ _ Nein _ . This ‘friend’, he is not… a danger to me.”

“No?” Mercy asked, one eyebrow arching up as she looked from the bloody rag to his face. 

“Let me rephrase- my beloved enemy,” Zee said as he turned back into the garage and beckoned them to follow. “Long lost and, I thought, dead- has come a-calling.”

“Which one?” Tad asked as he and Mercy entered the bay. Turning his hat backwards, he went to dig through the tool bins for his wrench set. The Passat he’d been working on the day before was still parked in the garage waiting for him. He could hear Mercy rustling around in the bakery bag back in the office. Despite her distance, her hearing was good enough that she would keep track of whatever his father said. 

Tad knew most of his father’s stories, spanning centuries of myth and history alike. Zee made sure of that, preparing him for whatever potential “old friends” could come out of the woodwork in case they targeted Tad along with him. He had a good memory for tales and events; if he hadn’t been quite so good with mechanical engineering, he might have made the same foolish choice as Mercy and gone for a history degree. He snorted softly as he grabbed his wrenches. It didn’t matter in the end, now that he’d abandoned the degree altogether.

“I think maybe the telling will have to wait,” Zee said, his normally gruff voice bright with cheer. “It wouldn’t do to spoil the fun.”

Shooting his dad an incredulous look, Tad gave up and dropped to get under the Passat. If Zee didn’t want to talk about something, he wouldn’t, no matter how much Tad poked and prodded. They were similar in that way, Tad thought ruefully. He let himself get lost in the metal guts of the car, his curiosity about his father’s enemy and the remnants of his nightmares washing away as he was forced to focus on the rusted innards. 

By the time he shoved himself out from under the car a few hours later, he was preoccupied with the damage he was discovering. What was supposed to be a simple fix was going to unfold into a multi day circus, and that was if he could get it running again at all. Grumbling under his breath, he wiped grease off of his hands and went in search of muffins. 

His father was in the office rather than the garage, surprisingly. Zee usually left the computer work to Tad and Mercy, preferring to do the metalwork that he specialized in. Though he was adept at technology, he tended to hand off most of it to Tad when he could, always commenting that it was a young one’s game to play. When Tad leaned over the desk, craning his neck to see what Zee was doing, his dad gave him a sharp look and minimized the website he was looking at. “None of your business. Aren’t you supposed to be fixing that poor wreck?”

“I’m supposed to be, but I’m starting to doubt it will accept my help,” Tad said dryly, dropping into one of the office chairs and snagging the bakery bag. “Mercy said you’ve been keeping secrets from her. Are you keeping them from me as well? Or are you looking at something inappropriate instead?”

With a dirty look, Zee growled, “I am allowed my secrets, boy. Nosy children ought to keep their noses where they belong, if they don’t want to lose them.”

It was one of his dad’s favorite sayings from his childhood and made him smile. “I’m going to tell her to check the search history for lewd websites.”

“You do that, tell me what you find,” Zee snorted. “And tell her to put in the parts order while she’s at it, she is cutting it too close.”

Before Tad could reply, Mercy rushed into the office, already stripping out of her coveralls as she ran for the shower. Breathless, she called back over her shoulder, “Diplomatic emergency, I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“Emergency?” Tad asked, sitting up. His father was also at attention, scowl deepening at they looked after Mercy.

Over the sound of the shower, she yelled, “Not that kind of emergency. Emphasis on diplomatic. Apparently the feds are in town and want to meet with Adam and me about some investigation they’re working on.”

“An investigation here?” Zee asked. “What are they investigating, that we do not know about?”

“Don’t know, but they said time was of the essence or I would have scheduled the meeting after work,” Mercy said, hastening out of the shower with her dark hair hanging in tendrils around her face. Finger combing it roughly, she glanced at both of them as she tied it back. Her expression went from distracted to rueful. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Zee waved her away. “The work is good for the boy. He needs to occupy his time.”

Even as Tad squawked in protest, Mercy laughed, darting out the door. She stuck her head back in before it could close, pointing a finger at him in mock chastisement. “Can’t be getting lazy, you’ll catch brain rot. Glad I can help keep you on the right track, kiddo.”

“And the horse you rode in on,” Tad called after her as she disappeared out into the lot. Shaking his head, he turned back to his father, only to find Zee giving him a speculative look. “What?”

“Not that I am advocating your departure,” Zee said, tapping his fingertips on the desk, “But the school was good for you. Perhaps finding something to do here besides work would be good as well.”

“I read plenty,” Tad replied with an eye roll. “I’ve done the work for the degree twice over in the last year ‘occupying my time’.”

And trying desperately to distract himself, both from the nightmares and the increasing distress of the year as it passed. Two months of imprisonment in the fae reservation being forced to watch his father tortured had done nothing for his grim outlook, to say nothing of the following fights with vampires, witches, and the one spectacularly unpleasant troll. He kept his thoughts to himself as his father surveyed him. To his surprise, Zee looked away as he spoke again. It was unusual for his dad not to meet his eyes while they were talking. “I find that I may need your help, due to recent events.”

Tad could only assume he meant whatever visitor Zee had wounded in the garage earlier. Sobering at the thought of another battle, he said, “Sure, what’s up?”

“There is a weapon I need you to recover,” Zee replied, tapping a rhythmic tattoo on the desk now.

“One of yours?” Tad asked, brows rising. His dad usually took care of the recovery of his weapons himself, due to the incredibly creative curses most of them were imbued with. Tad had helped him with one or two over the last year, the finding of them at least- Zee destroyed them himself. Those were both simple, though, a bracer that was buried in a field near the reservation and a ring left for months in the lost and found of Uncle Mike’s before the spell concealing it wore off. Privately, Tad suspected Zee only brought him along for the first to do the digging. 

“ _ Nein _ ,” Zee replied. At Tad’s surprise, he smiled slightly. “There were other smiths, although they are dead and gone- and never as good as I am to begin with.”

“Yeah, I know, but why do you want one of their weapons?” Tad asked, lost. “Yours are better, right?”

Making a dismissive gesture, Zee said, “I have no intentions of wielding it, boy. Think of it as… a small revenge.”

“Against the ‘friend’ you met this morning?” Tad asked.

“ _ Erzrivale _ ,” Zee corrected. “One of the few that is still alive.”

“Arch-rival, huh,” Tad said, feeling as if his eyebrows were going to hit his hairline. Again, he asked, “Which one?”

“None of your business,” Zee said almost merrily. 

“Really? You want me to go find some sword so you can use it to taunt some  _ erzrivale _ -” Tad used air quotes as he said the word, his father rolling his eyes as he did- “of yours, and you aren’t even going to tell me who it is?”

Zee just looked at him steadily, crossing his arms. After a minute, Tad groaned. “Fine. Where’s the sword?”

“I imagine it is wherever he is staying,” Zee replied. “He has a penchant for comfort, this one. I have plans to meet him tonight, at the zenith of the moon, that we may once again test each other. He will be away from his lodgings then, and you may search them uninhibited.”

“Let me get this straight,” Tad said dryly as he got up to make coffee. The dingy coffeemaker on the shelves that held the garage records was nearly as grimy as some of the wrecks in the scrap lot out back. It was the single appliance that had escaped the multiple destructive forces that had battered the garage over the past few years, inevitably turning up in the rubble and wreckage afterwards. Mercy was beginning to sound reverent when she spoke of its uncanny ability to survive, as if it was a sort of mascot for her own similar abilities. Tad was more of the opinion that it would be a mercy killing if the poor machine would just succumb to the next attack. 

As he filled it with water at the sink in the washroom, he continued, “You want me to find your enemy’s hotel room- if it’s even a hotel room- and wait until he’s out of it attacking you in the middle of the night to break in and steal his sword?”

“ _ Ja _ ,” Zee said with a single decisive nod and no sign of concern on his craggy features, despite the fact that what he was asking was ludicrous. 

“And you think his sword will be in his hotel instead of with him for this ‘duel’ because…?” Tad asked, dumping the water in the coffee maker along with a handful of grounds. 

“It is more of an ornamental weapon than something one would use,” Zee said. “At least, one who is going to fight one such as myself.”

Leaning back against the shelf, Tad picked up one of the chipped mugs waiting by the machine and spun it in his hands. “And you want me to do this while you’re fighting him because…? Won’t he most likely be dead afterwards?”

“I have no intention of killing him,” Zee replied airily. “With so few of my enemies left, I find that I cherish the ones alive- at least, those who are not devolving into true  _ feinds _ .”

Tad shot him a sidelong look as he went about pouring a cup of coffee from the burbling machine. “And he doesn’t have a chance of winning, right? You can beat him?”

“It is not for you to worry about me,” Zee told him with another gesture of disdain. “That is my privilege, to worry, not yours.”

At Tad’s dark look, Zee added, “I am in no danger,  _ mein sohn _ . I believe, having met with him this morning in a brief skirmish, that his philosophy on our meeting tonight is much the same as mine. We who are old do not seek out death lightly, ours or anyone else’s. Your concerns are unwarranted.”

“Okay,” Tad sighed, looking down into the coffee cup. While he could lie if absolutely necessary, though he preferred not to, his father’s full fae blood kept him from speaking untruths. If Zee didn’t believe he was in danger, he probably wasn’t. It wouldn’t stop Tad from worrying. He knew from recent experiences- traumas, he amended in his mind- how fragile his father could be, if he was put in a position where he could not or would not retaliate against his enemies. To Tad’s distinct discomfort, it was usually love for his son that kept Zee from said retaliation. As he thought about it, his eyes narrowed and he looked back up at his father. “Are you asking me to do this just to keep me away from the fight?”

With an expression that was far too innocent to look natural on Zee’s grim face, his dad said, “I want the sword to embarrass this enemy of mine, above all else. The weapon has passed between us several times in the past. That it will keep you busy while I dispatch him could be considered a coincidence.”

At the careful phrasing, Tad groaned again. “You are, you’re doing this because you don’t want me there.”

“A clever fae always has more than one reason for anything he does,” Zee replied. “Perhaps I want to face him alone for a true test of what I am still capable of, and perhaps I know that you would not agree to stand by peaceably while I did so.”

Even as Tad started to protest, Zee silenced him with one hand, sobering as he made the curt gesture. “ _ Nein _ . Enough. Trust that I will live to see the morning, and that I have my reasons for giving you this task, the first among them being that it will aid in my triumph over this  _ erzrivale _ of mine.”

“Fine,” Tad growled. “Do you have any idea how I’m supposed to find this guy and where he’s staying? Or what this sword looks like?”

He didn’t bother asking for advice on breaking in. His glamour was good enough that he could walk into most places unnoticed, wearing any number of faces. It made him think again of filching Lia’s hospital records and then school transcripts and he grimaced, stuffing memories made too fresh by his bad dreams back into the boxes they belonged in. He started sipping his coffee to hide the expression before his dad noticed, ducking his head down.

“The sword is old, it looks much as Excalibur did, though perhaps a shorter haft,” Zee told him. He nodded, having seen pictures of his father’s legendary creation drawn and embroidered in historical photographs. He suspected that Zee had acquired Excalibur recently as well, though his father had yet to produce it to show him. Zee continued, “It has certain… extravagant properties as well; when it is unsheathed, it produces light bright enough to blind, and it can change its size as its wielder demands.”

“What sword is this?” Tad asked, frowning. “It sounds like something I should know.”

“When all of this is said and done, I will tell you,” Zee said, his voice bemused. 

“Fine, keep your secrets, old man,” Tad snorted. “Any other useful information you can give me?”

“ _ Mein erzrivale _ , as I said, enjoys comfort. He is drawn to beauty. He will be staying in a place that encompasses both, or so I would bet,” Zee replied. Nodding again, Tad took another sip of his coffee as he ran through the hotels in town that could qualify as beautiful. The tri-cities had a few older buildings that might would fit. As he drank, his father added, “And though he has had many names, I believe the one he is using now is Noah Ardlaw.”

Tad choked. As he coughed up the coffee that had made its way into his lungs, his father eyed him speculatively. “I would know if you had crossed paths, he would make sure of that.”

“No,” Tad said hoarsely. “I don’t know him. Coffee went down the wrong pipe.”

His father accepted the explanation without comment, standing from behind the desk to return to work. “I trust you can find him. You will call me if there are any complications.”

Tad just nodded, not quite trusting his voice yet. As Zee disappeared back into the garage, Tad dropped back into one of the office chairs, the mostly empty coffee cup dangling from his fingers. There was no way it was a coincidence. Ardlaw wasn’t a common name, and if Noah Ardlaw was one of his father’s old enemies, it tracked that he was fae- and that any children he had would be half blood fae as well, just as Lia was. It was the reason they’d become friends to begin with, both of them recipients of the scholarship for their weird backgrounds, and summarily rejected by most of the human residents of the university.

“Okay,” he muttered under his breath, trying to push back against the flood of memories, nightmares and emotions that were trying their best to tie his brain into a Gordian knot. “Okay. Easy. First, steal the sword.”

He couldn’t quite put words to what he thought would come afterwards, but he suspected that he wasn’t ready for it. With his thoughts devolving into chaos, he abandoned the attempt to keep them straight and went back to the car in the bay, trying to lose himself in his work. Despite his efforts, he remained preoccupied and the Passat remained a worthless wreck. Even when Mercy returned and she and Zee threw in with him, he couldn’t get it to turn over.

He noticed the looks both his dad and Mercy were giving him as they finally gave up and shut the hood of the car at closing time. Grabbing a rag to clean his hands, he scowled at both of them. “What? It’s a mess, it’s not my fault it’s unfixable.”

Putting up her hands placatingly, Mercy said, “Never said it was. We can try again tomorrow, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll call the owner and tell her it’s scrap.”

As they all went about closing down the garage, Mercy waited a moment, then said, “Got something on your mind, Tad?”

“Yeah, food. I’m starving,” he said curtly, chucking his coveralls into the washroom without care. “You? What’s the whole FBI thing about?”

“They’ve got some dignitary in town and they want our help protecting him,” Mercy said in disgust. “Apparently he’s some sort of important ambassador but I don’t know from where, I didn’t meet him- and he’s here for some top secret meeting with the fae. They seem to think he might be in danger, although for the life of me, I don’t know why the fae would meet with someone openly if they were going to harm him.”

After Zee’s, and by association Tad’s, violent rejection of the Grey Lords and the reservation, when Zee made it perfectly clear what kind of price he would exact on anyone that tried to recover him or his son, news from the reservation didn’t reach them often. Tad grinned at Mercy’s disgruntled look, his mood slightly lifted by the fact that he wasn’t involved in the latest round of absurd political rigamarole. “Well have fun playing bodyguard to the upper echelon, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the endless meetings and dry, circular conversations.”

“Have I mentioned that I hate you today?” Mercy asked, slapping his arm playfully as she headed for the door. “Pray for me- and for the dignitary I have to do my best not to assault.”

“You? Assaulting an important political figure?” Tad called after her. “Setting off a diplomatic incident that will start a war? Never.”

With a rude gesture, Mercy got in her car and left. As Tad walked to his truck, his dad locked the garage behind them. Before he could close the truck door and start his car, Zee caught up with him and grabbed it, leaning down into the truck and dropping his voice. “The meeting is at eleven tonight, when the moon is in the center of the sky. I must prepare. You call if you need help- and if there are unforeseen complications, you abandon it,  _ ja _ ?”

“Unforeseen complications?” Tad asked.

“He is not without his tricks,” Zee said, releasing the door. “Though I doubt he will use any of his old ones, he may have some sort of so called ‘booby trap’ around the sword. Dispatch it if you can, but if you cannot-”

“I’ll call,” Tad said with what felt like his thousandth eye roll of the day. “Don’t worry about me, worry about him.”

With a nod, his father headed towards his own truck, calling back, “ _ Pass auf dich auf _ , boy.”

“Take care yourself,” Tad called after him before he pulled out of the lot.

Without his dad in the house puttering around, Tad found that his thoughts were a lot more overbearing than he was strictly comfortable with. Doing his best to push them away, he forced himself to cook dinner and clean the kitchen like there was nothing more to his night than simple tasks before he grabbed his laptop. It took him longer than he expected to find any record of a Noah Ardlaw, and what was there wasn’t much. There were a couple property records that gave him nothing at all, scattered across the country, although from the tax records that went along with them, he wasn’t hurting for money. Another hour and Tad had a handful of public record documents and a headache. 

Exasperated, he looked up all the high rated hotels in the tri-cities and resigned himself to doing things the old fashioned way. It took him six calls to find the hotel with a room under the name Noah Ardlaw, by which time his elaborate dances around the truth were starting to make his headache worse. “Yes, thank you, I’ll be sure to tell the Alpha that you’ve been very helpful. Ms…?”

As the desk clerk babbled back at him, he made a mental note to tell Mercy’s mate that a Ms McKinney had been very helpful, regardless of how confused Adam would be. It wasn’t entirely untrue that he was working as a representative of the Columbia Basin Pack, Mercy had told him plenty of times that he was one of their people, an ally that the werewolves were glad to have and protect in turn. He just had to be careful not to mention that this particular venture had nothing to do with the pack or Adam Hauptman and let the hotel staff make their own assumptions from what he carefully didn’t say.

After he got off the phone, he glanced at the clock and found that he’d almost successfully burned three hours. Now, he thought with a sigh, he just had to suffer through one more. He took his time picking out one of the long knives from his dad’s collection in the attic, passing over the enchanted weapons in favor of something relatively mundane. He was fairly sure the only thing the knife could do was dispel glamour, although it had a wickedly sharp edge. It seemed like it might be useful uncovering whatever booby traps his father’s rival had around the sword.

Even as he changed into darker clothes to better sneak around, belting the knife at his hip, his thoughts wandered back to Lia. Noah Ardlaw had to be a relation of hers, if not her father. He half smiled at that, although there was no real humor behind it. It would be some kind of luck if she was the daughter of someone his father counted amongst his many enemies. It certainly would make it hard for Tad to question the fae about Lia’s whereabouts. He expected the whole arch-rival battle under the moonlight would put a damper on Noah Ardlaw’s willingness to talk to him.

With a half hour to kill, he sat on the floor by his bed and dropped his head back against the mattress to stare up at the ceiling. She was alive, she had to be, he told himself, even if she had disappeared. He was broken enough just from that, he didn’t let himself consider what her death would do to him. It had been bad enough when she was abducted, a half fae girl taken from her apartment in the middle of the night. The police couldn’t find a single trace to find her, but Tad had, and the second he sensed the witchcraft, his world went haywire and never quite recovered. 

It had taken him three days to hunt the witches down through the city to a warehouse in Brooklyn. It only took him half an hour to kill most of them. He still didn’t like to think about it, the melee that changed how he looked at himself in so many very uncomfortable ways. He learned how few boundaries he had when someone he loved was threatened, and in learning, found out exactly how little control he had over his talents. Despite Zee’s lessons all through his childhood, the weapons training, the metal smithing, the enchantments and glamour, he had no experience with the destruction he was capable of when he was motivated. 

Though he didn’t like to think about it, he couldn’t be certain that Lia’s disappearance had less to do with the witches and the torture and more to do with what she witnessed him do to her capteurs. He was unnerved enough as it was without the thought that it was his fault she left, his monstrousness. Since then, he had thrown himself into learning control, learning how to be better, choosing not to be the force of nature that lurked inside him without morals or care. More than once, he caught Zee watching him during his practices with an unreadable expression, and knew his father suspected more than Tad wanted about what was spurring his new desire to learn and temper his magic. 

Putting his head in his hands, he used one of those many lessons to try and calm down, centering himself with steady breaths. He couldn’t quite get rid of Lia, but dug through his memories until he wasn’t looking at her missing fingers or the bone sticking out of her leg or the clawed gashes lining her back, breathing until he could focus on anything but that, even if he was still stuck in memories of her.

Her hair, always unruly and usually tied up in lopsided buns and braids that he tweaked whenever she passed too close; he smiled at the thought. She was tiny and had burnished dark skin that owed more to Latin America than any fae blood, like her mother, she said. Although they had a strict unspoken agreement never to speak about their fae parents, they traded plenty of stories about mothers they’d both lost too young. She knew every story he had about Mercy as well, his adopted older sister and her werewolves and increasingly outlandish disasters. He could still remember what she sounded like laughing until she cried when he told her about Mercy’s awful triangle love affair with Samuel and Adam. 

The other unspoken rule between them was the one he still kicked himself over. They were both engineering majors, practically drowning in schoolwork and overtired. She had plans to go out for a terminal degree after they graduated, her small frame belaying an incredible amount of determination. At the time, he had been much the same, when he was still curious and interested in how the world worked, in things he could learn and create that would make it work better. It made sense when she told him she didn’t have a place in her life for anything other than friendship, not if she wanted to do all the things she was planning. Inundated with his own work, he shrugged it off and continued to spend every waking moment with her, content with that for the time being.

“Should have broken it,” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and heading for the stairs. He was fairly sure he would regret not telling her how he felt for the rest of his life. He checked the clock as he passed the kitchen and found that it was nearing eleven, to his profound gratitude. If he had to spend another hour alone with himself, he would be researching the best way to tie a noose instead of tracking down a rogue fae’s hotel room.

True to his father’s assumptions of Noah Ardlaw, the hotel was one of the older and nicer ones in the tri-cities, with ornate Victorian appointments decorating the stone facade. He parked his truck across the street at a restaurant and wandered over, putting his hands in his pockets and letting his glamour smooth over him. He was better at getting people to notice him than going unnoticed, but he was good enough at nondescript that most humans didn’t take note when he put some effort into it. Ardlaw’s room was on the second floor. He made his way through the hotel casually, wandering about more than he had to as he checked for traps. There wasn’t a single trace of glamour in the place that he could tell, and he drew his father’s knife as he got closer to the room, keeping it up and flat against his forearm as he searched for any sign of a trap.

When he got to the room, he leaned in to the door and listened for a moment. There was something moving in the room, or someone. Eyes narrowing, he wondered if Noah Ardlaw had some kind of fae guarding the sword, beast or otherwise. His father would have mentioned it if so, or so he hoped. The lock on the door was a key card, but the whole thing was metal, wired with copper, and the latch itself was plated steel. Grinning, he brushed his fingers over the key card reader, fritzing out the wires inside. With the knife in a loose grip, he readied himself for whatever was about to attack him. It was almost welcome, the threat of violence doing more to get rid of his preoccupations than anything else he’d tried. Snaking his magic through the door latch, he pushed it inward silently.

Whatever he thought he was expecting, it wasn’t the entire hotel bed flying straight at his head. He hadn’t heard a single sound from within the room to give him warning and almost got smashed, diving out of the way as the bed crashed into the doorframe and broke halfway through the wall, the mattress sagging in the broken wood frame. Landing in a crouch, he whirled on his heel to deflect any other furniture that might come hurtling at him. It would be seconds at best before the sound of the bed going through the wall would attract attention. He had to work fast to find the sword and get rid of whatever was determined to see him crushed.

He was expecting a desk, maybe even a chair, to take him off his feet. Instead, when he stumbled, it was because he finally got a look at his assailant. With one of the wooden chairs held frozen over her head, Lia gaped at him, her head tilting slowly as she stared. 

They stood in dead silent shock for a full minute before the sound of hotel employees running up the hall broke their reverie. Lia tossed the chair down and hissed, “Out- out out out, come on, we have to go!”

Feeling a bit like his head was full of cotton, Tad nodded mutely and darted after her as she ran for the window. She threw it open and straddled the sill, glancing up at him. “Can you make the jump?”

“Yeah, go,” he said breathlessly. “Parking lot across the street, my truck is there.”

With a quick nod, she dropped out of sight, coming into a view a moment later as she sprinted down the alley towards the street. He leapt out after her just before the hotel workers made it to the hole in the wall, keeping his glamour up as he dashed down the alley just in case. 

When he made it to the parking lot a few minutes later, Lia was leaning with her palms planted on the hood of his truck, breathing hard. Her quick smile was unconscious, lips curving as she looked up at his approach. It faded into sober blankness when he got close. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he said, at a loss for better words and cursing himself.

“So,” she said as she straightened. “Long time no see.”

She almost sounded as awkward as he felt. Now that he was looking at her, most of the things he’d imagined saying to her were tangled in his throat, leaving him afraid of speaking for fear that what he said would be incomprehensible. Rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, he said, “I, uh, tried to find you. After.”

Her dusky skin darkened in a flush as she looked down at her feet. She was still wearing her worn canvas sneakers, knotted crookedly at her ankles. “Yeah, my dad wasn’t too happy about the whole kidnapping thing. He took me out of school, moved us out to Texas, didn’t let me out of the house for six months…”

“I mean…” he said slowly, wincing. “It was bad.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she snapped sarcastically, holding up one of her hands as she rolled her eyes. She was wearing a prosthetic strapped to her arm, the three missing fingers replaced with immobile plastic. At his expression, she dropped her hand, crossing her arms and looking away. “Sorry, I just… I know it was bad, you don’t have to tell me.”

“Sorry,” he said just as awkwardly. “I didn’t mean- It stuck with me.”

“I’m sure it did,” she muttered. “I should thank you, I never got to, before Dad loaded me up and took me away. For getting me out.”

He couldn’t find a response, studying her in silence. She was thinner, the slightness making her delicate rather than just petite, and the hollows in her cheeks and under her hazel eyes were shadowed. She looked like he felt, like she’d been crushed between the jaws of the world and reality and spit back out wrong. 

“I have nightmares,” he said suddenly, surprising himself. “Since then. I don’t know if they’ll ever go away. I can’t tell anyone, I don’t know how, and it feels like they’re going to eat me alive. I didn’t know if you were okay after, I just kind of hoped you were because I couldn’t make myself think anything else.”

Her eyes were wide, her mouth tight as she looked up at him. It felt like a dam was breaking inside of him as he took a breath and continued, “I looked for you for months. There’s no record of your name anywhere, I tried everything. Failed out of that semester, quit school before I could fail anything else, moved back home and I still can’t stop thinking about any of it- about you.”

Despite the changes in her appearance, despite the fact that it had been a year since he’d seen her, the moment he started talking in earnest it felt like a part of his life was complete again. He couldn’t remember a single person over the course of his life that he was more comfortable speaking to, and couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized how much he missed it until she was in front of him. Swallowing, he said, “I missed you. I miss you. A lot.”

There was a shininess to her eyes that looked suspiciously like tears, though she was blinking rapidly to dispel it. Before he could say anything else, she jerked forward and hugged him roughly, knocking her head into his sternum hard enough to hurt. He grabbed her just as tightly, dropping the knife with a clatter. Her voice was thick and muffled in his shirt as she said, “I missed you too, Tad. A lot.”

For what felt like a long time, they just stood there, holding each other. Tad dropped his chin to rest on top of her head, breathing in the scent of her. When Lia finally stepped back, clearing her throat and looking away, he felt the absence like it was physical pain. Sniffing, she gave him a smile that had a tinge of her old mischievousness in it. “The name thing is because of Dad, he had me in school under a fake name. It’s Liadan, just so you know. Liadan Airgetlam. Did you know I was here?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I would have come sooner if I did- were you going to find me and tell me? Or did you… I mean, I don’t blame you for not doing it, after all that… stuff.”

“What, the whole smash the witches into tiny pieces and paint a warehouse with blood thing?” she asked wryly. When he winced again, she reached out and snagged his hand, twining her fingers through his easily. “Don’t look like that, you saved my life. I mean, it was egregious, but it’s not like I was upset about them being dead.”

“Oh,” he said, something inside his chest easing finally. He hadn’t realized how much tension he was carrying until it was gone. It took him a moment to work through it, relief making him feel weak. Her hand tightened around his as she watched his face, but she didn’t say anything. When he regained his balance, he frowned. “Wait, why are you here, then?”

“If not for you?” she said. “I admit, if I knew this was where you lived, I’d have shown up on your doorstep the second I got here- or months ago, really, although Dad has me on a short leash.”

She smiled when he gripped her hand tighter, then added, “I only remembered you being in Washington, not where. The whole secrecy pact. And there aren’t any records of a Tad Adelbertsmiter, which you would think would be a pretty easy name to find.”

“Thaddeus,” he replied automatically, then grimaced. “Don’t use it, for the love of god.”

“Only if you never call me Liadan,” she retorted, making a face. “Anyways- I’m here with my Dad, he’s got some sort of business with the reservation and he said he has an old “friend” to visit.”

As she said it, dropping his hand to put quotes around the word, he blinked. He’d known it was possible, but his brain wasn’t working right, reeling from the surprises. She didn’t seem as stunned as he was, and he wondered if she knew about his dad, if she had figured out the same thing he had. “Uh. You have a name for that old friend, by chance?”

Later, he thought he should have seen it coming, but seeing her again had thrown his focus. She dropped him with a snap kick straight to his knee, elbowing him in the throat and leaving him gasping. Ducking down while he was still trying to find his breath, she kissed his cheek and said, “You already know the name. Sorry about hitting you- I’ll make it up to you, I promise, but I’ve got to keep this sword til sunrise or Dad is gonna kill me.”

With that, she took off across the parking lot with supernatural speed. Stumbling to his feet, Tad rubbed his throat and coughed, shaking himself as he bent to grab the knife and pull out his car keys. He heard her voice distantly as he did. “And sorry about your truck!”

He gave up on the truck within a minute of popping the hood. She might not have been raised by a mechanic, but she had most of an electrical engineering degree, and he was fairly certain it would take him actual effort to undo all the damage she’d wrought in the few scant moments before he caught up with her after the hotel room. Shoving his knife back in its sheath, he tore after her. 

He wasn’t as good at scent tracking as the wolves, but he could sense magic better than most, feel it in the air like a tangible current. It was even easier with Lia. The feel of her was familiar, staticky and bright in the air as he vaulted the parking lot fence and started to run in earnest. She was heading off towards the nature preserve, away from the roads. It suited him just fine. The less he was exposed in populated areas, the more he could let loose. 

Til sunrise, she said, he thought as he ran. A handful of hours to catch her and take the sword- he hadn’t seen her carrying one, but that meant nothing with fae weapons. The faint hurt at her attack was ebbing, replaced with an even mix of exhilaration and joy. They were nothing if not ambitious in school, and he could remember a thousand different contests between them, each driving the other to work harder, stretch further, and otherwise beat the tar out of each other in whatever way they could compete. This pursuit felt very much the same, except with the added inclusion of their fae powers. Flexing his fingers as he gathered power, letting it course under his skin as he sped up, he grinned. 

It took him longer than he expected to catch up with her. Neither of them used their magic in college, preferring to stay low profile in a student population that didn’t much care for the fae. He had plenty of interesting talents inherited from his dad, but preternatural speed wasn’t high on the list; Lia never spoke about what she could do. Evidently, besides being able to chuck a queen sized bed across a hotel room, she could run. He never so much as caught sight of her during the chase, relying on his senses to stay on her trail. His chest was burning by the time he felt her magic getting stronger, all the way through three quiet neighborhoods and out into the nature preserve. This late, it was deserted, the cool night breeze making the only sound as it blew through scrub brush. She was leading him out of view of onlookers, he guessed, though he wasn’t sure what she intended to do once they were in the preserve.

Lia was waiting for him in the empty parking lot. She was still unarmed, though her stance was centered and low as if she expected him to attack her. Raising an eyebrow at the posture, he bent and put his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “You really think I’m going to jump you?”

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about your dad,” she told him. Her lips were curved in a smile now, her eyes sparkling and shot through with bright gold. “Dad said I should be ready for him to send something monstrous if he didn’t show up himself, and mentioned that he wasn’t too concerned about leaving bodies in his wake.”

Shrugging as he straightened, Tad said, “He’s mellowed.”

“Obviously, if he raised you,” she replied, grinning. “I never would have guessed Loan Maclibuin was your dad.”

“Pretty sure I did a good job following in his footsteps against the witches,” Tad said.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly keeping a close eye on what you were doing,” she said dryly. “I mean now- you were throwing the old machines from the warehouse, right? Metal. Should have noticed sooner, I guess. I did catch the bit where you poleaxed the coven leader with rebar. Just never quite put all the pieces together until now.”

“And now that you have?” Tad asked, his wariness tempered by the smile she was giving him. She didn’t particularly look like she thought he was an enemy.

“Well, I’m not giving you the sword,” she replied. As she did, she reached up and pulled a gold necklace out of her tank top, hooking her thumb under the chain and holding it out so he could see. There was a tiny golden sword hanging from the chain. “So I figure we’ve got an interesting night ahead of us. Dad would be so disappointed in me if I didn’t get a good battle in defending his cherished blade from the dark smith’s son.”

“A good battle,” he repeated, cocking his head. “You saw what I can do, Lia. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her grin widened. “You won’t. But if it makes you feel better- no face shots, no dismemberment, we can go to first blood, surrender, or sunrise. Agreed?”

Pulling the knife, he flipped it from blade to hilt and back again in one hand. “You really want to do this?”

She tensed in readiness, her teeth flashing in a sharp grin that made him think her fae side had a predatory edge to it. In the morning, he resolved that he would ask her about it; he was definitely going to find out who her father was, at the very least. “I really do. Just so you know- the witches took me by surprise. If I’d been awake when they set the sleep spell on the apartment, they never would have gotten me. I’ve got enough juice to take out a coven, just like you.”

The wind was picking up. He narrowed his eyes as he felt it, wondering what exactly she was capable of that she thought she could outfight him. “I’m not a coven.”

“Yeah, well, I did get you away from all the cars and iron, I’m not stupid,” she replied. She curled her hands into fists, adopting a fighting stance and tilting her head at him. The prosthetic fingers curled just fine, he noticed. Her voice was a lazy drawl that matched her grin when she said, “You ready, darlin’?”

As dumb as he felt for it, the endearment made him smile. There had to be something wrong with him that a girl about to try and kick his ass was giving him the distinct feeling of butterflies in his gut. Mercy was rubbing off on him, he thought wryly. “Ready when you are.”

He wasn’t, however, ready for the bolt of lightning that struck centimeters from his face, knocking him backwards as all of the hair on his body raised. His skin felt like it wanted to leap off of his bones. Yelping, he rolled into a somersault and regained his footing, his eyes wide as he found Lia again a couple feet away.

She wiggled her fingers at him mischievously. “Daddy can control the weather. I only got a little bit, but the bit that I got…”

“Electrical engineering comes naturally, huh,” he said, reaching out with his magic to try and find metal, anything metal, although he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with a conductor against lightning. There was a mass that felt like a shipping container a half mile out, towards the nuclear power plant. He would have to drive her towards it.

Keeping his posture loose so as not to betray his intentions, he started to circle her. She turned on her heel as he did, keeping him in front of her. As casually as he could, he asked, “Did ‘Daddy’ teach you to use that sword too, or was lightning enough?”

“What, this sword?”

And she struck, just as he leapt for her, the sword appearing fully sized in her hand as she whirled to meet him. Within a few moments, he realized that his father’s assessment of the weapon as ornamental was a bit misleading, and decided that he would have a few choice words for Zee about his description later. It seemed to work just fine to him, Lia matching his knife strokes without a single pause. Losing himself in the duel, following motions that were second nature after a decade fighting his dad, he felt a rising exhilaration as they danced with clanging blades through the parking lot and out into the scrub.

He was better at navigating the rugged terrain than her, catching her off guard when she stumbled over a rock and nearly disarming her before she recovered and kicked him away. As they tangled again with the sound of metal against metal ear splitting, he said breathlessly, “Not used to the wilderness, city girl?”

“Evens the playing field,” she gasped back, parrying one of his blows and spinning neatly beneath his arm. He barely got out of the way of her sword point and saw her savage grin. “You’d be dead meat if we were in my city, beanpole.”

“You know this is a city, right,” he replied, grinning at the old nickname as he drove her back in the direction of the shipping container, while he formed a plan in the back of his mind.

She snorted, leaping out of the way of his downward strike and flipping backwards without pause. “Please, this is a backwater.”

“Just because,” he started, pausing as they went through a blurring flurry of blows before they both fell back, “this isn’t your goliath city, doesn’t mean it’s not a city.”

“It barely counts and you know it,” she said before lunging towards him.

It took him a long time to get her close enough to the shipping container that he could reach out with his magic and seize it, still engaged in the blindingly fast duel and splitting his attention. He was wary about letting Lia get more than a few feet away for fear of her calling down another lightning bolt. He could only hope that she wouldn’t do it while she was close enough to get hit as well, although her affinity for electricity might render her immune to the strike. As he started to wrap his magic around the container, she almost got a strike on his forearm, the sword close enough to his skin that he felt the heat from the swing. 

In that moment, she noticed what he was doing that was distracting him and leapt back. “You want magic, Tad? I’ll show you magic-”

He ripped the shipping container towards them, tossing the knife away so he could use his hands to mold the magic into structure. The container warped with a deafening creak as it flew through the air, curving into a crude dome that he aimed for Lia in an attempt to trap her beneath it without crushing her. Even as he worked through the magic in a few scant seconds, he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck and his arms rising, the acrid scent of ozone in the air. 

Their eyes met for a split second. His glamour was gone, all of his attention on the iron he was bending to his will; he saw in that second that hers was as well. Where he knew his fae form was far more graceful than the human face he wore, he didn’t think he was particularly striking outside of the silver glimmer of his eyes. She was breathtaking. Her skin was a few shades darker, warmed with golden tint that matched her gleaming eyes. In sharp contrast, the hair knotted into a bun at her crown was bright, pure white, the same color as the delicate curved horns that curved back from her temples. She looked like a hunt lord, one of the Wild Hunt fae that were long gone in the modern age, even in a faded grey tank top and jeans with holes in the knees. 

In the next second, with a noise that shattered the night, the metal container and the incoming lightning met. Tad had half of a breath to feel the blast before he was thrown off his feet and everything went black.

The sky was lightening with the sun when he blinked awake, immediately regretting opening his eyes. He was lying flat on his back in the dirt, sprawled out with one leg bent awkwardly and his foot asleep. Sitting up and wincing at the massive migraine that was splitting his skull, he shook himself and looked around. The first thing he saw was the shipping container, though it looked more like a knotted asteroid than a human made vessel, crushed and marked with electric burns. Grimacing, he leaned back on his arms and ran through ways to get rid of it before any normal people saw it. 

“Made a bit of a mess of things, didn’t we,” Lia said, coming up from behind him and plopping down on the ground at his side. She glanced at him and smiled. “I won.”

With a pointed look at her split lip, torn shirt, and the bloody scrape on her collarbone, he said, “You kept the sword, I’ll give you that.”

When he reached out and brushed his thumb under her lip, she leaned into his hand with a sigh. “That was, as my father would say, a nice jaunt. You ought to see your face- you’re going to have a hell of a shiner later, and that knot on your head looks like it’s gonna hurt.”

He found he didn’t care a whit as she scooted closer and put her head on his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she murmured, “We’re gonna have to hide that before anyone sees, or Dad is going to go postal, even if I did keep the sword.”

He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head absently, sighing as well and breathing in her scent. “I can bury it.”

“Mmkay,” she said quietly. For a moment, they sat like that, Tad closing his eyes as the sun started to rise in earnest. Finally, Lia straightened and clambered to her feet. She held out her hand for him and he eyed the prosthetic as he took it and heaved himself up. Her half smile was rueful. “Bit gruesome, really, but it’s worse without the prosthetic.”

“I could make you something better,” he replied as they wandered towards the container, gathering his magic and trying to remember how his father called the earth for help in burying the witches. He knew he couldn’t make it through the entire ritual, but he felt he had a good chance of asking the metal to sink into the ground. “If you wanted, anyways, I don’t know how your dad would feel about you taking gifts from the ‘dark smith’s son’.”

As he started to shove the twisted hulk of metal down into the dirt, the tendons in his wrist standing out with the strain from his outstretched hand, she put her hand against the small of his back, her palm warm as she slipped it under his shirt to touch his skin. “I don’t think I care what Dad thinks.”

“Yeah?” he asked breathlessly as the last bit of the metal crumbled under the dirt with a creaking groan. When he looked down at her, she was looking back up at him from under her lashes. 

“That whole abduction and torture thing put some stuff in perspective, you know,” she said, moving her hand so she could twine her fingers through his. “School, the degree… it matters a lot less than it used to.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he said with a crooked smile. 

“And I had a year to think about all the things I didn’t get a chance to do when I could have,” she continued softly. “I did try to find you. After I healed up.”

All of the words he could think of weren’t good enough for an answer and he stopped trying to put them together. Instead, he bent and kissed her. She tasted like sunlight, fresh and clean and bright, her lips soft as she reached up and pulled him closer. He found himself breathless again for reasons completely unrelated to magic. When she pulled back, brushing the tip of her nose against his as she opened her eyes to look up at him, he felt dazed. A bright, wide smile curved her lips, faint dimples creasing her cheeks. “What do you think our dads are going to do with this?”

“Deal with it,” he replied before he cupped her face to kiss her again. He could feel her smiling against his mouth. 

With the sun fully risen, they walked back towards the parking lot together, hands still entwined. His face was starting to ache and his headache wasn’t abating, but it was the best he’d felt in a year. 

“I should go find Dad and see how his night went,” Lia said as they headed down the street. “I’m going to have to go back to Texas with him tonight.”

At Tad’s forlorn look, she squeezed his hand. “For now, anyways. He’ll need time to get used to the idea of me leaving.”

“Leaving?” he asked carefully.

“I did finish my degree, they let me do it online because of the circumstances,” she replied. “Got my Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering a couple months ago.”

He kept silent, barely daring to hope as they turned onto the main road.

“And I couldn’t help but notice there’s that nuclear power plant at Hanford,” she continued. “I imagine they have jobs for electrical engineers.”

At that, he stopped and pulled her back into him to kiss her again, not giving a damn about the cars passing as she wound her arms around his neck and he lost himself in the feel of her. This time, she was breathless when they broke apart. “I take it you’re in favor of the idea?”

“How soon can you come back?” he asked with a grin.

Stepping back, she squeezed his hand one more time before letting go. “If I go start working on Dad now, it’ll be sooner. Go put some ice on your face before it starts to swell- I’ll leave my phone number for you.”

He stole one more kiss before she jogged away, turning to run backwards so she could blow him another kiss with a radiant grin. Only when she disappeared over the hill did he start the long walk back to his truck. 

It took him a half hour to get to the parking lot, and another to get his truck to start running, although it was making a quiet groaning noise that sounded ominous. Getting in, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror and winced at the blooming bruise that was covering half of his forehead and blackening one eye. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, grimacing at the newly cracked screen, and called Mercy.

She sounded even more harried than the morning before. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me this isn’t an emergency.”

“Car trouble,” he replied. “Just going to be late again. How did your diplomatic mission to fairyland go?”

“I just spent a sleepless night hunting down a missing diplomat, that’s how it went,” she growled, “Only to have him waltz into the hotel at six this morning looking smug as a snake to tell us that his business was completed and he would be leaving shortly. I don’t think he even met with the fae, they were as lost as I was when I got in touch to tell them he’d been found.”

“Sounds frustrating,” Tad replied, pushing down his desire to laugh as he put together the pieces that were now becoming obvious. “At least there wasn’t bloodshed?”

“There would have been if Adam wasn’t there to talk me down,” Mercy grumbled. “I’m on my way to the garage, I’ll see you there. Be warned, I’m going to be mean as a snake today.”

“That’s fine,” he said, catching sight of an envelope on the passenger seat. “I’m in a good enough mood for both of us.”

She was muttering something grumpy as he hung up and reached out to snag the envelope. The note inside was in Lia’s messy scrawl, and as he read it and surveyed the contents of the envelope, he felt a curling warmth spread through his chest. With his truck groaning ominously, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the garage to find his father.

Zee and Mercy both came out of the garage as he pulled in with similar expressions of concern at the noises his truck was making. When he got out and they got a look at his face, Mercy sucked in a horrified breath and Zee’s craggy face drew into a terrible expression that was a mix of rage and worry. “I told you if there were complications that you were to call me,  _ verdammt _ boy!”

“It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle,” Tad replied, shrugging.

He let his father grasp his shoulders, Zee studying him with narrowed eyes as he searched for further injuries. With a wordless sound of anger, Zee let him go and stalked back towards the garage, muttering curses under his breath. Mercy sidled up beside Tad as they followed Zee, concern darkening her gaze. “You need to put ice on that, Tad. What got you? What complications was Zee talking about? Also, how in the world are you in a good mood with a face like that?”

Giving her an innocent look, Tad said, “I had an interesting night. The good parts outweighed the bad by a long shot.”

“Oh?” Mercy asked, waiting for him to elaborate. He just blinked at her innocently, making her roll her eyes in exasperation. Zee appeared from the office with one of the ice packs from the minifridge, the ones they started stocking after work injuries began to include witch curses and worse. Slapping it into Tad’s hand, he growled another few curses, grabbing a wrench and throwing open the hood of the Passat.

“I’m fine, Dad, really,” Tad told him, putting the ice pack over the aching side of his head gingerly. “This was partially my fault anyways, I was being careless.”

“Careless!” Zee snarled. “Careless, careless- careless put you in the way of that damned witch’s curse, and yet you learned nothing.”

He trailed off into another string of invectives, wrench clanging as he dug into the car’s insides. His movements were jerky with anger. Tad knew he was just as angry with himself for sending Tad out into harm as he was for Tad’s carelessness. Going to lean on the bumper of the Passat beside his father, he said again, “I’m fine. Besides, it wasn’t a total loss.”

At that, Zee shot him a dark look. Before he could begin to rant again, Tad reached under the collar of his t-shirt and pulled out the necklace Lia had left for him in the envelope, the tiny sword dangling from his fingers as he grinned triumphantly. “See?”

“What is that?” Mercy asked curiously, craning her neck to get a closer look.

“That,” Zee growled, “is a small trinket that is not worth the boy’s injuries.”

Despite the displeasure in his voice, his gaze softened as he pursed his lips, eyeing the necklace and Tad. Taking the opening, Tad asked, “So I made out all right, how did your end go?”

“ _ Sohn einer hundin _ led me on a merry chase all about the desert before he crossed swords with me;  _ dummkopf  _ wouldn’t stand still and take his beating,” Zee snorted. “I was clearly the victor. He claims otherwise. Of course,” and the old fae’s tone got sly, “that was before he knew you recovered the sword.”

“I was under the impression that it only counted if I got it before sunrise,” Tad replied. “That this was more of a consolation prize.”

“ _ Nein _ , the sword is long contested no matter the time- although it would have been a blow to his powers if it were taken while we were conducting our business,” Zee said, straightening and giving him a sharp look. “I am curious, what gave you that impression? I would not expect him to leave a trap that would give you information, it is not his way.”

Just as Tad was taking a breath to answer, shuffling explanations in his head as he tried to find the one least likely to spur his father into further rage, a slick dark grey car slid into the lot of the garage. All three of them turned to look at it, both Mercy and Zee taking on varied expressions of extreme displeasure. At their reactions, Tad raised his eyebrows, letting the ice pack drop as he surveyed the sports car with new interest. It was a shining, pristine and new car, Italian- Alfa Romeo, he thought as he eyed it. 

The man that got out was slightly below average height, with a square, angular face and wide set grey green eyes narrowed with irritation. His suit looked like it could be nearly as expensive as the car. Zee crossed his arms and glared right back at the interloper as he strode towards them, and Mercy let out a quiet growl. 

When he got within earshot, she raised her voice and said, “Didn’t you have important business elsewhere? Too important to go ‘mucking about with coyotes and beasts’, wasn’t it?”

“I see you also had the pleasure of dealing with this one last night,” Zee said grouchily, jutting his chin towards the man. “Italian? Too fancy, they pretend to be art instead of machine.”

“You have the sword?” the man snapped without preamble. 

Zee gestured at Tad, who held up the necklace, studying Lia’s father with no little interest. She shared a few of his features, the sharp cheekbones and straight nose, but her face was softer, making her lovely where he was too sharp to be comely. At the sight of the necklace, the man, Noah Ardlaw, spat a curse in a lyrical language that Tad thought might be Gaelic. It had the same ancient quality as the German oaths his father used when he was thoroughly pissed off.

Putting his hands on his hips, Ardlaw shook his head in disgust, glaring at Tad though he addressed Zee when he said, “And here I was, thinking the smith would work alone. Your son, I take it?”

With an unpleasant smile, Zee said, “You should know better than to underestimate your opponents.”

“Forgive me, Siebold,” Ardlaw replied sarcastically, “Even my imagination did not stretch so far as to think you would have produced a child.”

Shrugging, Zee crossed his arms, replying with equal vitriol. “It is a strange new world we live in,  _ ja _ ? Adapt or resign yourself to losing, Noah.”

“‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio’,” Ardlaw quoted with a sigh. “Very well.”

His gaze moved to Mercy, a smile with a hint of wickedness crossing his face. The expression bore more than a passing resemblance to one Tad had seen countless times on Lia. “I was not misleading you when I said I had pressing business elsewhere, Mrs Hauptman. I trust you will accept my apologies for abusing your hospitality.”

“Your trust might be misplaced,” Mercy muttered darkly before pasting a fake smile on her face. “Have a nice trip, Mr Ardlaw. I hope your business goes well enough elsewhere that you stay there for a long, long time.”

“Oh I wouldn’t count on that,” Ardlaw said, flashing straight white teeth predatorily as he turned and strode back to his car. He paused in the open door, leaning on the roof and eyeing Tad speculatively. “I expect I will be back very soon.”

Even as Mercy made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, Zee smiled grimly. “I would not have thought you so eager to return, with your sword lost along with your upper hand.”

Slamming the door shut, Ardlaw started the car, the window sliding down so he could grin at them. Instead of replying to Zee, he turned that wicked smile to Tad. “My daughter thinks highly of you, Thaddeus Adelbertsmiter. Keep the sword. Take it as a warning- if you lose her favor, you will lose mine as well, and I will come back for it the day that happens.”

With that, his engine purred to life and the car glided out of the lot at a reckless speed. Both Mercy and Zee turned to look at Tad. Mercy’s eyebrows lifted nearly to her hairline even as Zee’s expression soured and he said evenly, “His daughter.”

Dropping the necklace back under his shirt, Tad put the ice pack back on his face and started to whistle as he walked away. Behind him, Zee growled under his breath, “His daughter.  _ Verdammt _ .”

Tad could hear the amusement in Mercy’s voice as she said, “How cute do you think she is, if he still likes her after that black eye?”

“ _ Halt die klappe _ ,  _ liebling _ , or I will shut it for you,” Zee growled as he resumed clanging about in the Passat. It was an empty threat and they all knew it, Mercy laughing as she headed for her project Bug. Tad went to the office to put on his coveralls, the necklace warm against his skin and his smile unflagging despite the ache from his face. He knew that the nightmares wouldn’t be back, and that Lia certainly would. For the first time in a year, and the second time that day, he felt whole again. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
